MUSIC AND WORSHIP

RICHARD WAGNER (1813 – 1833)
For the past several months we have been study-
ing The Spiritual Lives of Great Composers, a marvelous book by Patrick Kavanaugh, in an effort to show how many of the composers were men of faith. Today we concentrate on Richard Wagner and his Ring of the Nibelung. Anyone who is acquainted with Richard Wagner’s life and work may wonder why he is present in a book about spiritual life. Wasn’t he known for his self-centeredness, for pursuing outrageous love affairs, for befriending the philosopher Nietzsche, the self-styled “anti-christ” and Christian-hater? Wasn’t Wagner later idolized by Hitler as a prophet of the Third Reich?

As a boy, the brilliant Wagner showed an affinity for literature, culture and different languages, but never for music. Not until he reached his teens – after being inspired by Weber and Beethoven – did young Wagner study music. Then, as he did everything in his life, he rushed in with reckless abandon. He rushed into marriage as well, proposing to an actress named Minna Planer just after he began his musical career at age 20. Wagner and his wife made one another miserable through three decades of dire poverty. Yet through it all Wagner kept on producing musical masterpieces – works that would go unheard and unappreciated for many years. Once the Vienna Court Opera agreed to produce Wagner’s new work Tristan and Isolde each singer struggled to learn the difficult music, and then struggled to get through the confusing rehearsals. No one had ever seen such bizarre music, such complexity, such gibberish. Before Wagner could witness the composition’s premiere, the opera’s frustrated director finally shelved the work as unplayable, after giving it a full seventy-seven rehearsals.

A crucial turning point came in 1864 when one of Wagner’s few great admirers, Ludwig II, ascended the throne in Bavaria and became Wagner’s “super-patron.” The new king magnanimously paid all of Wagner’s debts and gave the composer a generous salary. Now Wagner’s wildest dreams could become reality. The compositions he created mark the birth of an entirely new genre of musical form, which he called the “musical drama.” Chief among his accomplishments is the monumental Ring of the Nibelung and the mammoth Bayreuth theater built to stage it.

After his first wife died, he ignited a roaring scandal by wooing the brilliant Cosima Von Bulow, wife of the noted conductor and devotee of Wagner’s music. The VonBulow’s marriage was annulled conveniently, and Wagner married Cosima, which did result in a happy marriage. The composer continued to produce extraordinary works, both in music and in literature, until his death at the age of 69.

Christian themes emerge clearly in some of Wagner’s music dramas, such as Tannhauser, Lohengren, and his last great work, Parzival, which has been called his “most Christian of works.” Was he a Christian? The contradictory life of this great composer has bewildered musicologists for decades and continues to do so. Dennis Bucher